The Republican National Committee’s program to out-do former President Obama’s grassroots organizing has gone into warp speed and already made a record-breaking 30 million voter contacts in its goal of keeping the House and Senate in GOP hands.
RNC officials said that 30 million voter contacts is a month ahead of schedule and better off than it was in 2016 when it out-hustled the Democrats to help Donald Trump win the presidency over presumed winner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The unusually aggressive ground campaign was designed to build a Republican grassroots effort. The RNC turned to its Republican Leadership Initiative Fellowship and it has locked in 20,000 fellows, four times its voter outreach force of just two years ago.
The party called the program a “game changer” in 2016 and has high hopes for this year when many polls show the GOP losing control of the House.
The 20,000 fellows are being trained and dispatched as “neighborhood team leaders” and “core team leaders.” And they are getting the credit for making the 30 million voter contacts in calls and door-to-door shoe leather.
“This speaks to enthusiasm for the Republican and Trump agenda,” said an official.
The 20,000 fellows are in 28 states and supplement the work of the RNC’s 540-plus staff on the ground, said an RNC fact sheet shared with Secrets.
“They are critical to our permanent, on-the-ground presence and largely considered our ‘eyes and ears’ as they have a constant pulse of the community. It’s our RLI’s who feed us the information we need to better understand where we need to compete in races – this is especially important in close races and special elections,” said the RNC.
The program and fellows are the pride of the party, which shared other details about it:
- The Republican Leadership Initiative (RLI) Program is the name of the program we use to train “RLI Fellows,” build our permanent ground game, and develop these permanent field organizers.
- Fellows are the RNC’s top-tier volunteers who are handpicked among applicants to complete a 6-week intensive training program.
- They are responsible for establishing neighborhood teams, developing volunteer infrastructure, and leading voter contact activities (door knocking, phone calls, petitions, etc.)
- Oftentimes, our Fellows rise through the ranks to become a permanent, paid staffer on our team and move on to hold various leadership positions.
